This volume offers new insights into the radical shift in attitudes towards death and the dead body that occurred in temperate Bronze Age Europe. Exploring the introduction and eventual dominance of cremation, Marie-Louise Stig Sorenson and Katharina Rebay-Salisbury apply a case-study approach to investigate how this transformation unfolded within local communities located throughout central to northern Europe. They demonstrate the deep link between the living and the dead body, and propose that the introduction of cremation was a significant ontological challenge to traditional ideas about death. In tracing the responses to this challenge, the authors focus on three fields of action: the treatment of the dead body, the construction of a burial place, and ongoing relationships with the dead body after burial. Interrogating cultural change at its most fundamental level, the authors elucidate the fundamental tension between openness towards the 'new' and the conservative pull of the familiar and traditional.

The book explains how change in burial practices take place by focussing on how new practices are processed by local communities.

About the Author
Marie-Louise Stig Sorensen is Professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. She has made important contributions to the scholarship on the European Bronze in a range of topics, including dress, creativity, the construction of identities, and the role of 'things.' Katharina Rebay-Salisbury is Research Group Leader at the Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences. She specializes in interdisciplinary approaches to analysis of Bronze and Iron Age burials. She was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant for her project 'The value of mothers to society.'


Book Information
ISBN 9781009247399
Author Marie Louise Stig Sorensen
Format Hardback
Page Count 350
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 650g
Dimensions(mm) 262mm * 185mm * 19mm